The basic functionality of a payment service can be described with reference to system 100 shown in FIG. 1. The system 100 illustrated in FIG. 1 includes a purchaser 101 who is conducting a purchase transaction with a merchant 102. The merchant 102 and the purchaser 101 are affiliated with payment service 103. A basic example of this relationship is a credit card processing payment service 103 where the purchaser 101 is a card holder of the credit card processing payment service 103, and the merchant 102 has a merchant account with the credit card processing payment service 103. After the transaction is initiated, a processing request is sent to the payment processor 103. The payment processor 103 will then approve the transaction and administrate a settlement procedure in which funds are transferred from the user 101 to the merchant 102. The settlement procedure is administrated through communication with one or more financial institutions 104. Returning to the example of a credit card processing payment service, payment processor 103 would be the credit card network administrator and the one or more financial institutions 104 would be an issuer bank representing the purchaser 101 and an acquirer bank 104 representing the merchant 102.
The modern economy offers a wide array of different payment services and business relationships that can implement basic characteristics of the transaction described with reference to FIG. 1. The basic example of a traditional credit card network was provided above, but there are many more variations. For example, the financial institution 104 could be the financing arm of the merchant 102 and the payment processor 103 could be a payment service issuing a card to the user 101 on behalf of the merchant 102 in the form of a store-branded credit card. As another example, the financial institution 104 could also have direct relationships with both the merchant 102 and the user 101 such that the financial institution 104 will appear to be processing the transaction on behalf of the merchant 102 and the user 101 even though front-end processing of the transaction is outsourced to the payment processor 103. Numerous other arrangements exist, each with widely variant relationships between the various parties shown in system 100. The variant relationships can take the form of a hierarchy of information. From this perspective, the hierarch of the hierarchy is the entity that serves as an administrator of the system and has a direct relationship with every other entity in the system granting the administrator access to information regarding how the subordinate parties are utilizing the system.
Almost all payment processors offer their users a portal from which they can access their account. A traditional method for accessing an account was to call a customer service line associated with the payment processor, but most payment processors have shifted towards using a web-enabled user interface as the main point of access for account holders. The users can log into these portals using self-identifying credentials and make payments to their accounts, check their balances, initiate transfers to other accounts, and perform various other functions. Payment services generally also provide merchants with online portals from which they can access their merchant accounts.